Symptoms

We found performance tweak - disable generatePublisherEvidence. Is this tweak applicable to 4.6.9 ?

We also found this doc, it looks like this tweak is for .NET framework 2.0
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb629393.aspx

Can you confirm or deny this recommendation?
 

Diagnoses

See resolution
 

Resolution

Please have a look at this KB article:
http://help.k2.com/onlinehelp/k2blackpearl/icg/current/webframe.html_slow_startup_for_k2_components_when_machine_has_no_internet_access_.html

That article basically states that if your K2 server (that also runs SmartForms) does not have internet access, it's a good idea to disable the generatePublisherEvidence flag in either the machine.config files or the aspnet.config in the .NET Framework directory.

I have found that this is only relevant to .NET 2.0 (as per your findings) and since K2 is based on .NET 4.0 (or at the minimum 3.5), this won't really make a difference since Microsoft already fixed it.

But you can always give it a try, for that you would have to edit the following files:

C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727CONFIGmachine.config
C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETFramework64v2.0.50727CONFIGmachine.config
C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv4.0.30319CONFIGmachine.config
C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETFramework64v4.0.30319CONFIGmachine.config

as per the KB article states. Keep in mind, you'll have to find the tag, which is quite far down. I think you'll have to create it if I'm not mistaken.

I've seen that this does improve performance of first load, especially when you have a proxy where K2 has no outside access.